I’ve seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly… they can’t kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I’ve seen humans die from smoking them… if I were you I would stop smoking them.

Helplessness didn’t have to be my identity, I wasn’t condemned to it. I was willing – able – to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed [my mom] to help me, to take care of things for me – and to save me – but, back in the home where I’d learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.

The waves thundered still onto the beach the next morning and Davy spent a good hour watching them pound the sand. It was therapeutic. He didn’t know which he identified with more – the surf, raging against immovable stone outcroppings, or the rocks, taking enormous punishment without being able to strike back